An administrative challenge that has stifled an affordable housing project on Bainbridge Island for the last six months has been dismissed by a hearing examiner, allowing it to move forward.
Hearing examiner Phil Olbrechts wrote in his March 25 ruling that a zoning code ordinance, which was recommended by the Bainbridge Island Planning Commission in September and scheduled for a public hearing by the city council, did not violate the State’s Environmental Policy Act. The decision rejects the complaint filed that same month by resident and former parks commissioner Dawn Janow.
“The appellant has made a valiant effort to render the plain and clear terms of a statute ambiguous,” Olbrechts wrote in his nine-page decision. “No such ambiguity is found.”…